GC 2007: Electronic Arts Press Conference

Striking a balance between the hardcore and the casual. New details on FIFA and Rock Band.

By Tal Blevins

Electronic Arts kicked off the German Games Convention today with one of the first press conferences of the show.

EA started their conference with an impressive set of stats, stating that over two billion units of Sims games have been sold to date. Yes, that's two billion. They talked about how over half of the new gamers coming into the market today were casual gamers, while showing a picture of an elderly lady playing Wii Sports bowling. They said they would be pushing hard for the casual gamer over the next year, with over 40 games set to launch on Pogo. However, EA also admitted they had to strike a good balance between the casual and the hardcore, and they wouldn't be leaving out the core gamer in their approach.

With that said, they went into some demos of their big upcoming titles for 2007. A brief demo of Skate on the Xbox 360 was up first, which you can read about in our recent preview.

Some new details on FIFA 08 were announced at the show.

Next up were a few trailers for the next iteration of Need for Speed -- Pro Street -- and Crysis. The Pro Street trailer seemed like it was over almost before it started, and it didn't really show any gameplay. Crysis, on the other hand, made the crowd fall silent in stinky convention anticipation. The new trailer was very cinematic, and started out like a Hollywood movie with full credits. It focused on the ultimate body enhancements in the game, such as maximum strength, maximum armor, and maximum speed. Although short, the trailer was well-received and garnered a round of applause at the end.

A brief world premiere demo of FIFA 08 on the PS3 was up next. They showed off a simulated match of England versus Germany, which of course appealed to the crowd at GC. The demo focused on many of the new signature moves in the game and chaining these moves together into dynamically animated combo moves. EA also announced they would allow players to take videos within the game and upload them to the Internet directly from the game itself. Rounding off the demo was an exclusive announcement of the "Be a Pro" online co-op play, where 10 players can play with one another, controlling up to five players per team. This feature will be a post-release free download.

EA and Harmonix rocking to Do You Wanna Be My Girl by Jet.

Rock Band was the next big game EA was showing off. Alex Rigopoulos from Harmonix took the stage to show off what they've been up to for the first time in front of a European audience. Alex mentioned that the game will release this fall in North America and that it would be released in Q1 2008 in Europe. He also said there would be a PS2 version of the game, but it wasn't clear if that was just in Europe or not. Alex made a point to stress that the game would be localized for each region that it was released in, with specific songs for each territory both on the disc and through online downloads. He also announced ten new tracks from the original artists what would appear in the game, including Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones, Should I Stay or Should I Go from The Clash, Deep Purple's Highway Star, Cherub Rock from Smashing Pumpkins, and Faith No More's Epic. After the announcements, several rockers -- including Alex -- took the stage and played Are you Gonna be my Girl by Jet.